In-depth, detailed assessments of the trends and issues shaping transatlantic debates.
Introduction The 2020 presidential election was called the most secure in U.S. history, largely due to efforts to protect the nation’s different physical and cyber infrastructure. This was a triumph considering the physical, cyber, and even human [...]
This paper is the second in a series on technology policy through the lens of national security, published in partnership with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Read the first paper on the digita [...]
Executive Summary The Biden administration has a historic opportunity to unify U.S. domestic and foreign policy through an aggressive mission to combat corruption and kleptocracy. Middle-class Americans are frustrated by perceptions of corruption [...]
Introductory Letter Governments, civil society and industry recognize the importance of a secure, stable and accessible cyber and digital information space, especially in today’s challenging and unpredictable environment. In November 2018, the Fr [...]
Introduction and Summary In his push for bipartisan efforts on voting rights legislation, Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) warned that “the lack of transparency in many campaign finance rules provides multiple avenues for foreign and national adversaries [...]
Executive Summary The 2016 presidential election served as a wakeup call to the threat of authoritarian interference, and in the years since, many segments of American society—from the federal government to private companies and civil society gro [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the Center for Democracy and Technology's Senior Technologist in Elections and Democracy William T. Adler urge President Biden to establish a bipartisan presidential commission to recommend ways to [...]
Executive Summary In recent years, U.S. government officials have normalized a damaging notion: that soliciting or participating in foreign interference in a U.S. election will not be prosecuted. Foreign governments from Beijing to Moscow and else [...]
Executive Summary: Mobilize the Regulatory Arsenal The incoming Biden administration has signaled through speeches, articles, and interviews that one of its top policy priorities will be combating corruption and kleptocracy.See Vice President Joe [...]
This paper is the first in a series on technology policy through the lens of national security, published in partnership with the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School. Introduction Open societies have [...]
This piece originally appeared as a chapter in the Latvian Institute of International Affairs' book Towards #NATO2030: The Regional Perspective of the Baltic States and Poland. Introduction The Baltic region’s geography has been the single most im [...]
Introduction Europe is on the cusp of a crucial technological and political transformation. This year, most EU member states will need to finalize plans for building 5G networks, which will overhaul the way their economies function. Only a handful [...]
In mid-2020, the Alliance for Securing Democracy convened a task force of 30 leading American national security and foreign policy experts to devise a national strategy for the United States to offset autocratic advances in non-military domains of [...]
Executive Summary Democracies and Authoritarian Regimes in Competition for the Future Internet The United States and its democratic allies are engaged in a contest for the soul of the Future Internet. Conceived as a beacon of free expression with [...]
Russia’s disinformation tactics, techniques, and procedures are evolving. Stakeholders of all types—journalists, regulators, and researchers—must see the full picture of Russian activity as it is changing to anticipate what might be to come. Intro [...]
Executive Summary The United States, like many other democracies, faces concerted and sophisticated operations aimed at disrupting, delegitimizing, and in some cases altering the outcomes of its elections. While foreign interference operations are [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems’ Director for Europe and Eurasia Beata Martin-Rozumilowicz provide a guide to help election officials in the United States and Europe conduct secur [...]
This policy paper was co-authored with Edgar P. Tam, visiting senior fellow at the Paris Office of the German Marshall Fund of the United States. Please click the link at the right to view the full paper. President Donald Trump’s views on Iran hav [...]
Introduction According to a 2013 indictment by the U.S. Department of Justice, hackers backed by a foreign power gained access to the controls of the Bowman Avenue Dam, a small dam in the New York City suburb of Rye, New York. Cyberattacks on inf [...]
Executive Summary In addition to more widely studied tools like cyberattacks and disinformation, authoritarian regimes such as Russia and China have spent more than $300 million interfering in democratic processes more than 100 times spanning 33 [...]
Summary As the coronavirus pandemic has spread around the world, authoritarian actors have engaged in robust information-manipulation campaigns. China—where the virus originated and spread due to the government’s initial cover up and mismanagement [...]
Introduction One morning in 2016, staffers from the National Security Council and the Office of the U.S. Chief Technology Officer boarded a black van outside the West Wing. They were on a field trip to the State Department led by U.S. CTO Megan Sm [...]
ASD Research Assistant Etienne Soula and GMF Asia researchers Franziska Luettge, Melissa Ladner, and Manisha Reuter find that from March to April 2020, the Chinese Communist Party and large Chinese companies made at least 70 prominent donations to [...]
Introduction In a 1972 paper for the United States Air Force Project at RAND, the late Andrew Marshall defined what he called a more “efficient, effective U.S. competitive role.”A.W. Marshall, Long-Term Competition with the Soviets: A Framework fo [...]
ASD Emerging Technologies Fellow Lindsay Gorman, Harvard's Hugo Yen, and Virginia Tech's David Simpson provide a brief overview of 5G technology and related policy considerations for Harvard Belfer Center's Technology Factsheet Series. Introducti [...]
Introduction Authoritarian governments increasingly adopt technology-centric national strategies and methods of internal governance. They control their societies through digital censorship, propaganda, and surveillance, and use these same tools to [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine and the Bipartisan Policy Center's Director of the Election Project Matthew Weil identify 20 ways states could further protect the 2020 presidential election with additional funding. Introduction At t [...]
ASD Program Manager and Fellow Nad'a Kovalcikova and RAND Corporation Policy Analyst Gabrielle Tarini argue that NATO needs to develop a comprehensive political, economic, and security strategy to deal with China’s growing global power in a Women i [...]
ASD’s Elections Integrity Fellow David Levine joined with experts from the Brennan Center, Pitt Cyber, and R Street to produce a new report that provides an in-depth look at the equipment, staffing, supplies, and other costs of administering electi [...]
Introduction “For our friends, we produce fine wine. Jackals, we welcome with shotguns.” - Ambassador Gui Congyou, 2019Edward Lucas. “Sweden’s China Problem.” CEPA, January 7, 2020. This was how a Chinese ambassador warned Sweden of potential con [...]
Introduction Europe has been at the forefront of confronting asymmetric attacks from foreign adversaries. Disinformation campaigns have been used against the European public since the Soviet era, and with the advent of social media platforms, they [...]
Protecting the 2020 Election Intelligence and law enforcement agencies warn that Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign actors will seek to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. De [...]
In a world increasingly interconnected by technology, democratic governments are grappling with how to defend against and counter information operations targeting their societies. Russia has emerged as the most prolific foreign actor engaging in t [...]
How to Interpret Hamilton 2.0 Version 2.0 of Hamilton 68 displays outputs from sources that we can directly attribute to the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments or their various news and information channels. These channels and accounts often [...]
About the Author Nina Jankowicz is a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Kennan Institute, where she studies Russian disinformation and the democratic challenges of the technology age. Her first book, How to Lose [...]
This article was originally published as a German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Take on July 26, 2019. In 2014 the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) revealed a staggering Russian money-laundering operation perpetrated through [...]
In his testimony this week, former Special Counsel Robert Mueller III reiterated that foreign interference is “among the most serious” challenges to democracy, and that it “deserves the attention of every American.” The Alliance for Securing Democr [...]
On July 18th, 2019, ASD Deputy Director David Salvo and Head of External Affairs Rachael Dean Wilson released this report together with the Brennan Center for Justice, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Cyber Law, Policy, and Security, and the [...]
The following is an introduction to the submission by ASD Intern Amber Frankland In April 2019, the United Kingdom’s Home Office published its Online Harms White Paper, which proposed a regulatory framework designed to address the prevalence of “il [...]